A market research company has denied that calls it made to island residents concerning abortion were illegal.

Teamsearch Fieldwork contacted the Courier following a post on a Manx police social media page.

It said: ’Concerned people have asked us what to do. Simply tell them cold calling is illegal and hang up.’

Rob Hogan, Teamsearch Fieldwork managing director, said: ’I feel it is very important I attempt to set the record straight and provide some information to your readers and the residents of the Isle of Man.’ Mr Hogan said his company was a market research agency and not a marketing agency and did not sell any product or service.

The police later posted on social media: ’We have had clarification and the UK company calling local residents with questions on the subject of abortion are allowed to do so as it’s a survey.

’It is not classed as cold calling. Sorry for any confusion.’

Mr Hogan confirmed his company is working with ComRes, an independent market research agency based in London.

He said the company is ’attempting to gather unbiased and statistically random and robust opinions from the Isle of Man general public on the topic of abortion.’

He said: ’We appreciate the topic is sensitive however if we only talk to a certain area, a slice of the public then the opinions cannot be considered robust.’

He noted market research is regularly conducted in the island and the results of some have been referenced in Tynwald.

There had been contradictory ideas on social media groups as to who had commissioned the research.

Some individuals had claimed it was Abort67 and others the government.

Mr Hogan took this opportunity to confirm this was false, saying the research was commissioned by CARE, a Christian charity.

The charity, he said, wanted to understand the state of opinion in the island.

questionnaire

He provided the Courier with a copy of the questionnaire being used in the research.

Respondents are told at the start who is conducting the research and asked whether they would like to participate.

The questions include topics such as Down’s Syndrome, gender, the rights of medical staff to refuse to take part in terminations and the ’rights’ of the foetus.

The research questionnaire was written in consultation with Dr Graham McAll.

Dr McAll recently spoke at a meeting of medics hosted by Chris Robertshaw MHK, entitled ’why the Abortion Bill needs a Select Committee’.

He said: ’Parts of the consultation on the Abortion Bill were inadequate.’ He declined to comment further.

Mr Robertshaw told the Courier he was not involved with the phone survey but said the results ’will have value to some extent as does any survey.’ Nevertheless, he told the House of Keys ’interim results showed it would produce a different outcome from previous consultation’.